Muddy is right on the money. Your example of Grace is an example of an AR1 who would almost certainly be admitted at Williams and many of its peer schools–assuming, that is, that her recommendations and personal statement effectively told her story. And your story of Tyrone actually tells the story of an applicant who lacks that “oomph” (being a participant in a handful of clubs, regardless of the subject matter of those clubs, and having some vague do-gooder aspiration, is going to do little to help an applicant’s position).

Williams rejects hundreds of students *numerically* indistinguishable from Grace each year. So do Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, etc. And, for the most part, there is an enormous amount of overlap in this “pool” of rejected students. E.g., Harvard, Williams, Yale, Princeton, etc., largely agree on which AR1s should be rejected. Thus, although there’s a widespread perception that college admissions is a crapshoot, there’s actually a great deal of uniformity to things. The reason why it looks random is because few applicants (and few applicants’ parents/guidance counselors) are really able to evaluate an application package with clear eyes. If you are the father of a kid who looks an awful lot like Grace–1570 SATs, 3.9 Stuy GPA–you probably feel like the reason why Grace gets admitted to 4/5 of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, and Williams, while your kid has to “settle” for Cornell (and I put settle in quotations because there’s legitimately no shame in that) is that the process is a crapshoot and Grace got lucky. More likely, though, Grace put together an application package that told an especially compelling story.

By the very description of Grace you provide, Grace has oomph++. She would probably be an enthusiastic admit at W and at many Ivies.

No. Williams rejects hundreds of students indistinguishable from Grace every year.

]]>By: Muddyhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-211413
Mon, 09 Oct 2017 13:21:34 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-211413Hi: Wrong. By the very description of Grace you provide, Grace has oomph++. She would probably be an enthusiastic admit at W and at many Ivies. “Oomph” is often mischaracterized by critics. It has nothing to do about whether an applicant is pre-med (perceived as negative oomph) or a social justice crusader (positive oomph). It has more to do with something tangible they will bring to a campus beyond top-of-the-mark testing and grades. Example: an applicant described by recommenders as among the “most intellectually precocious risk takers I have taught”, or “as able and imaginative in the laboratory as any undergraduate I have taught”. Or it could be an out of class accomplishment: the student who, over the course of four years in high school, helped write the definitive guide to snakes in Maryland, or the one who started a regional program to train fellow high schoolers to become in-school advocates for autistic students. It could even be (gasp), the student who transformed the Republican Club from a quiet backwater to the school’s central meeting place for civil political discussion. And while these are dramatic examples, the things that often separate the 1 who is admitted from the 1 who is not can be traced to two readers who are in accordance that the prospective admit has plenty of evidence in their file that they will be an intellectual force in the classroom and that the prospective waitlist is a very smart, dutiful (perhaps to a fault) student who has had little measurable intellectual impact in his/her classes: a subtler but still very real level of “oomph”. These students come from every cultural background. Whatever your position of how you perceive the college practices affirmative action for underserved populations or discriminates against Asians, you might be pleasantly surprised at how, in the committee meeting room, the 24 year-old person-of-color Green Dean will champion the Republican noted above and reject the social justice activist with too many B’s. There’s room to critique the admission process, for sure. But “Oomph”, as it is practiced in elite college admission decisions, has both integrity and very real importance.
]]>By: Hihttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-211358
Mon, 09 Oct 2017 02:56:13 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-211358“These are, for the most part, students who *despite* their raw numbers, lack a certain “oomph” in their application package”

* although Grace managed to achieve 1570 SAT and 3.9 GPA at Stuy–despite the fact that her parents are humble immigrants from China who operate a loundrymat in Queens– she indicated that she would like to became a doctor on her college application. This really is not that exciting, is it? Just another Asian kid who wants to sell out to upper middle class. Tyrone, on the other hand, managed to achieve 1240 SAT while being involved in a number of social justice clubs, and is interested in public interest law. Now, that’s more of an “oomph”, if you know what I mean. *
( how I imagine a conversation in admissions office in colleges across the county, including williams)

It’s an obvious fallacy that Williams was a safety school for literally every single student who declines an offer of admission to Williams. In fact, a substantial chunk of students who decline offers of admission to Williams attend a school with *lower* admissions standards–their local flagship state school, a different private school that offers a more generous aid package, etc. In any event, Williams is sufficiently selective that there are few-to-no applicants who *should* be using Williams as a safety. (So even if, as a descriptive matter, there is some small percentage of students who think that they are using Williams as a safety school, as a normative matter there really shouldn’t be.)

Second, yield is more complicated than you make it out to be. The relevant factor here is not overall yield (which is determined as much by the size of the class as it is the relative desirability of the school). Instead, the relevant factor is cross-admit yield: of students admitted to Williams and Harvard, how many choose Williams?

Now, as you can probably infer, Williams doesn’t generally win the cross-admit yield battle with Harvard. Harvard is an incredibly desirable school (for reasons unrelated to the quality of the education or the quality of the experience that it provides). In fact, by some measures, Harvard is the most desirable school. Nevertheless, although a majority of students admitted to Harvard and Williams choose Harvard, the yield rates of cross-admits are closer than you would think. I don’t recall the exact numbers from my time off of the top of my head, but I think it’s something like 60-70% of cross-admits choose Harvard.

This is all to say that if Williams adopted an admissions policy that increased the overlap between its admits and admits from Harvard and those other schools for which it loses the cross-admit battle (and the list of schools that Williams loses out on for cross-admits more often than not is *very* short), Williams’ yield would drop–but not precipitously. Assuming that the 100 matriculated students that you’re seeking to replace would have had a 60% yield, and assuming that the admitted students you’re replacing them with only will have a 25% yield, that means that you’re replacing 160 admits with 400 admits to achieve the same class size–which would decrease Williams’ yield from approximately 40% to approximately 35%. In other words, even if you replace an incredibly high-yielding 20% of the matriculated class with an incredibly low-yielding different demographic, the overall impact on the College’s yield is low. (In reality, any proposal is unlikely to have more than a 2-3% impact on overall yield.)

All of this said, this brings me to my third point, which I have repeated several times on here and folks have just ignored. Why are you assuming that AR1s represent the students in each class with the most potential? Williams isn’t. Nor, for that matter, is Harvard. And there’s the rub: admitting AR1s who are currently rejected from Williams may not actually increase the overlap with schools like Harvard (especially if you are admitted AR1s at the cost of minority candidates). The AR1s and AR2s getting rejected from Williams in favor of talented minority students are also by and large being rejected from Williams’ competitors. These are, for the most part, students who *despite* their raw numbers, lack a certain “oomph” in their application package. The sorts of things that impress Williams adcoms are generally pretty similar to the sorts of things that impress Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc adcoms–and so changing Williams’ admissions policies to favor numbers more substantially may actually result in an admitted class with *less* overlap at other ultra-elite schools, not more. (Do you really think that the numerically best Conn College matriculants–most of whom would be AR1s on Williams’ scale–got into Harvard and Yale and Princeton also?) As a descriptive matter, therefore, the effect of this proposal on overall yield is going to be difficult to assess, and may even be positive. As a normative matter, though, I don’t think it matters. I think that this proposal is bad for the same reason why Williams, Harvard, Yale, etc adcoms think it’s bad: admitting the “best” students (and building the best possible overall class) requires looking beyond SATs/GPAs.

I have no doubt that the new candidate will have great credentials in academia and administration.

It is how the candidate thinks and the vision being put into action that is of importance to me.

The candidate should not believe that Williams is akin to any of the Ivies except maybe Dartmouth. And definitely not the U of Chicago or Stanford. Or any of the great research universities where undergrads may be of sharing the faculty interest.

The candidate, while respecting ‘ratings’ to justify high cost and competitive comparison, should not seize on these as the benefits for use in positioning.

Williams has many features that may add up to advantages and benefits. Hopefully, the candidate will be able to express a vision that is achievable and wholly fitting to the image of Williams. eg ‘The Best College in the World’ is a child-like boast rather than an achievable goal.

Williams is a small, undergraduate school in a refreshing setting, equipped with facilities that physically enhance the opportunity for the educational experience, and populated with professors dedicated to inspiring students to opening their minds to achieve their full potential.

I don’t believe it necessary for Williams with 2000 elite students to be a direct emulation of our society as a whole. While obtaining some degree of diversity is important, such a model is not compatible with student selection as carried out in real life.

Stop pretending you are in competition with places like Harvard. The numbers prove you are not. The numbers prove that one of the primary required factors of your hypothesis (that people with highest scores who are admitted will attend) is not valid. You are using/ assuming that metric is static for Williams College- when it is clearly not.

The higher the scores, the more likely it is that students will choose another school over Williams.

In order for your argument to make sense, a large % of highest scoring applicants would have to choose to go to Williams.

It does not matter how many perfect scores you admit, if they don’t choose Williams.

The numbers clearly indicate:

Williams 40-45% admit yield (constantly over time)

Harvard 80-85% admit yield (constantly over time)

People often (over half of your applicants) use Williams as a safety. Your hypothesis does not work because of this fact. For your argument to be valid you would have to have yield numbers that point to a pattern of highest scoring students attending.

You admit those “hundreds of AR1s rejected” the most significant number change would be your yield… not your scores. Your yield would be even lower.

]]>By: anonhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-211277
Sun, 08 Oct 2017 13:20:34 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-211277You have to admit students who are going to attend. Admissions does not equal matriculation. Kane’s argument is based on a false assumption that Williams could compete with large powerhouses “if it only Williams admitted more students that are going to choose an Ivy League school.”

Not so. But for the fact that the better candidates choose other schools, Williams students would have better scores.

For most AR1s Williams is a backup school, which is why the scores at Williams are so much lower than they are at HYP and other better schools. Why admit a large number of students who are not going to attend?

Williams could admit enough AR1s to pack the campus full of them, but admissions is not attendance.

It is a silly and a fundamentally flawed analysis to assert that there is a simple correlation between who an institution admits, and who is going to attend.

You are forgetting the fact that the choice runs both ways. Williams has to choose to admit a student- and that student has to choose to attend!

Again, why isn’t “ability” best measured by taking privilege into account? Do you really think that someone who scores a 1500 on the SATs after two years of extensive studying with a private tutor has the same ability as someone who scores a 1500 on the SAT with no studying?

]]>By: Justa Commenthttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-211058
Fri, 06 Oct 2017 16:15:20 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-211058The selective college admissions dilemma–You can maximize for one of the following. Take your pick.

Entitlement (legacy and socioeconomic status). This perpetuates the college, which is a good thing in the long term. There is a historic achievement component here which tends to be cumulative.

Achievement (Academics, SAT, High school accomplishments). This is really the only factor that should impact student quality. Most would agree it is a larger category than SAT scores.

In the end, all 3 of these categories are used. It makes for a more interesting four years.

]]>By: ablhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210985
Thu, 05 Oct 2017 16:29:45 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210985If we’re looking for the “best” students, it seems unnecessarily constraining to only look at raw numbers. These numbers are helpful insofar as they are signals for success–high SATs and GPAs imply success in college (and, to a lesser extent, after). But not all high SATs and GPAs are created equal. I hope it’s not controversial to say that a student from a wealthy background who has had a private tutor every year since eighth grade, who took numerous expensive SAT classes, and who has never had to focus on anything other than her academics with a 3.8 GPA / 750 SAT average is probably a “worse” student than her classmate with the same SAT/GPA whose parents did not go to college, who has had to work a second job every year since eighth grade, and who took the SAT once with little prep.

I understand that this is a somewhat extreme hypothetical and it becomes much more difficult when we jump into the weeds and consider (1) which factors are relevant; and (2) for how much these non-numeric factors should count. Is a first-generation college Native American student with a 3.6 GPA / 700 SAT average who has spent her entire life on the reservation in rural Minnesota “better” than the described wealthy student above, for example? But the fact that this sort of line drawing is difficult and that we may disagree about which lines should be drawn where doesn’t mean that it’s not necessary or crucial to consider such factors in determining which students are the “best.” The editorial’s proposal–to focus solely on numbers–strikes me as being the quickest path to admitting an academically *worse* class of students.

I also want to head-off a potential response by noting that the fact that the kid without a tutor or the kid from the reservation may not immediately succeed on arriving at college to the same extent as the kid with all of life’s advantages doesn’t indicate that either student is actually “worse.” There are a number of learnable skills, like how to write a paper, that underprivileged students lack that have little bearing on their contribution to the college’s intellectual community.

]]>By: Name(required)http://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210182
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 16:05:24 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210182As a current student, I’m tired of the narrative that the kids who are pulled in largely through “other” factors are equally as academically qualified. This has been demonstrated to be empirically false- statistics do not lie. The validity of the op-ed thus rests upon whether or not other highly nebulous factors should supersede this lessened academic qualification. I would like to think that this could be the case- but it seems to me that the vast majority of students simply self-stratify, so that diversity based benefits are minimized. Additionally, the constant threat of being lampooned for mis-speaking makes it simply not worth it to engage on controversial issues. I would love to have discussions about what white privilege is and about the extent to which it pervades our society, for example. I think that’s really interesting. But why would I ever do that? The benefits are dwarfed by the risks, especially for the people who would benefit the most!. This is why, ironically, things like uncomfortable learning would make campus in a way safer for minorities- there would be a culture that made white people’s “cost benefit analysis” differently weighted, so that they might be willing to engage and might learn something from discussion! Additionally, this would go a long way towards increasing the actual benefits of diversity, as is discussed above.
]]>By: Muddyhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210167
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 12:50:55 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210167A few things to keep in mind that are important considerations. First, if one accepts that a part of one’s college education should be about imparting life skills for future success and happiness in one’s career and community life, in today’s US cultural competency is pretty darn critical. As the country’s professional class (where most elite college grads end up) becomes so much more multicultural, the ability to work around difference i.e unfamiliar family histories, faith traditions, language, etc will allow some to succeed far more because they will be armed with a kind of literacy in how “others” approach their lives. Many of our fathers–the generation of the old Williams– never had to navigate these challenges in their professional or personal lives. Williams and the other schools with resources that acknowledge this and build this kind of learning into their curricula and campus life programs, are making a direct and vastly important contribution to American society. And this can be accomplished only if the “others” on these historically Waspy campuses exist is such a critical mass that they feel empowered and heard in a meaningful way. My feeling (I’ve worked my entire career on college campuses) is that the current numbers of kids of color at Williams and elsewhere is pretty much at the minimum it needs to be in order for the entire community to benefit from the immeasurable good their presence adds to the educational quality everyone enjoys. This is what anyone interested in educational quality should be protective of rather than fixating on test score differentials. Secondly, a practical point. The best, most aspiring, most intrinsically interesting white kids will not generally feel compelled by a campus that minimizes the kinds of values I am talking about or one that is seen to be backtracking on its commitment to diversity. Less kids of color means less high value students of every background. I suppose I should be more empathetic to the human wreckage of all those Deerfield Academy kids assigned to the gulags of Lewiston ME and Grinnell IA, but I’m not. They will be fine. The natively smart kid from the Bronx, though arriving with some rough edges in her preparation, who works as hard as any student at Williams and who decades later is living a life of real significance and impact should be what Williams aims for not retreats from.
]]>By: anonymoushttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210121
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 02:36:05 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210121Addendum: There is a simple exercise to test Falk’s “preposterous” argument, and its corollary that GPA is meaningless. Correlate the awards at graduation with class honors (summa, magna, etc.). What would it mean if the top 10% of students (by GPA) received 50% of the awards?
]]>By: David Dudley Field '25http://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210080
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 17:59:56 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210080

I don’t believe low family education is a factor

Really? Can you provide more discussion?

I think that this is a big factor, mainly based on two things. First, the College, for more than 20 years, has loved to brag about how many “first generation” students it has. Falk was talking to the Boston alumni, just a few weeks ago, that it was 20% in the class of 2021. Second, there are not nearly enough such students to go around because, in this day and age, the vast majority of students with Williams caliber grades/scores (say, above 1450 SAT) have at least parent with a BA.

So, given a big demand and limited supply, doesn’t there have to be a huge preference given? As always, I am eager to learn more and have my priors challenged . . .

]]>By: Dick Swarthttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210079
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 17:55:51 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210079For Williams, The Best College in the World is an absurd goal.

A focus on the wildly varying statistical measurements used in rankings (see the WSJ rankings out today) will take away from the values that have made Williams with its small enrollment of undergrads, its idyllic location, and its loyal alumni so important.

‘Sociability’ and ‘enjoyment of learning’ are two intangibles that made the Williams experience so important for many of us.

The Best College in the World is an empty boast as an achievable goal fraught with chasing many measures of statistical nonsense at great cost in time and resources.

]]>By: JCDhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210078
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 17:52:41 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210078I can see the brave Mr. Kane has scored an impressive victory with the overwhelming simplicity of his argument: Delete the 100 lowest ranked students and replace them with 100 of the highest ranked students. What could be more simple than this?

This formulation is particularly brilliant because it leverages the emotional and financial investment this rural, intellectually backward, oppressive, climate-challenged school places on it main claim to fame: It’s startlingly high ranking in U.S. News and World Report.

To me, the power of this argument is that it reminds everyone that the bottom 100 members of the class really aren’t doing anyone a favor by being here.

]]>By: 3 billionhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210077
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 17:50:50 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210077I don’t believe low family education is a factor. You are right in the other points.
]]>By: David Dudley Field '25http://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210076
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 17:18:04 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210076sigh,

Thanks for your comments! Your participation is greatly appreciated.

Since you know the relevant academic literature better than any other reader, I would love your comments on this claim:

Of the 100 or so students in the class of 2020 with math+verbal SAT score below 1300 and/or ACT below 31 and/or academic rating below 4, the vast majority (90%+) of them also have at least one of the following “attributes”: black/Hispanic (US or international), athletic tip or low family income/education.

I believe that this is a true claim about the current Williams admissions process. Do you agree? If not, what percentage would you guess?

]]>By: 3 billionhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210075
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 17:14:52 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210075Falk’s opinion carries little wait ever since he hired his long time girlfriend to come to Williams to assist him in his duties while he was married to another woman. Doesn’t seem a good use of our donations to the #1 college.

Do other people have an opinion on this decision by our leader?

]]>By: sighhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210074
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 17:02:58 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210074as a professor, my “best” students are usually not my most high achieving students in a class. They’re the students who challenge me and their peers, who are intensely engaged with the learning process, and who take risks that can hurt their GPAs, but improve their learning. They improve the experience of their peers by being the ones brave enough to ask the basic question 10 of their peers are scared to ask, by connecting readings across courses or sections of my course, or by bringing real world experiences to bear on abstract theory or vice versa. GPA–let alone SATs–do a very poor job of proxying for any of those things.

this whole thing is a bad argument, rife with assumptions like Whitney pointed out and that weirdly says “leave it up to the professionals” while also not…leaving it up to the professionals who designed this current system. It also poorly represents the correlations between SAT score and grades and learning.

really wish i hadn’t seen this op-ed and come back here, even once.

*insert JCD right wing snark below*

]]>By: Snowed Inhttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210073
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 16:12:33 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210073The Williams College motto: Elites for Equality.
]]>By: anonymoushttp://ephblog.com/2017/09/27/best-college-3/#comment-210066
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 14:22:05 +0000http://ephblog.com/?p=41770#comment-210066Interesting observation by Falk: “the very notion that the ‘quality’ of students can be defined on a single linear scale is preposterous.”

I suppose this means Falk believes all GPA-based honors are meaningless.

The College has not done this study — although they should! — but I am doing much more than guessing. Recall this discussion from a decade ago.

An improvement of 1 point on the AR, similarly, correlates with an improvement of .16 points on the freshman GPA, and .14 points on the cumulative GPA.

On average, students in the AR 4 and below bucket probably have GPA’s that are 0.5 lower than those in the AR 1 bucket. Given the tight distribution of Williams grades, this is a huge difference, and probably also an underestimate because weaker students choose easier courses.

The other clue we have is in Phi Beta Kappa and other graduation distinctions. (Again, cumulative Williams GPA is not the only thing that matters to the definition of the “best” student.) Recall analyses like this one.

African-Americas and male football/hockey players are dramatically over-represented among AR 4s and below, and they are dramatically less likely to make Phi Beta Kappa.

When you do this, you will find that the vast, vast majority of students judged as “best” by the Williams faculty are academic rating 1 or 2, as determined by the admissions department. Very, very few of the students with academic rating below 4 are ever considered to be the “best” by Williams faculty. So, we should have more AR 1s and fewer AR 5s..

To be fair, I assume that this statement is purely your guess/opinion. You could be right, but you also could wrong. The College does not do a survey like the one you just described, do they? On the other hand, this would be a very interesting exercise to undertake. I suspect that the correlation between “best” and AR1 would be weaker than you think.